Qualcomm’s FLO TV, which broadcasts TV to mobile devices in the U.S. through its major partners AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), said it is on track to reach its goal of covering 100 major markets and more than 200 million potential customers nationwide by the end of the year. The company was delayed when the government decided to put off the transition from analog to digital TV signals. FLO was waiting for spectrum that was going to be freed up from that process. The new deadline is June 12, and today, the company announced that immediately following the transition this Friday, it will go live in 15 new markets, including Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco, and will expand in existing markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. More on MocoNews, here.  

Qualcomm’s FLO TV, which broadcasts TV to mobile devices in the U.S. through its major partners AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), said it is on track to reach its goal of covering 100 major markets and more than 200 million potential customers nationwide by the end of the year. The company was delayed when the government decided to put off the transition from analog to digital TV signals. FLO was waiting for spectrum that was going to be freed up from that process. The new deadline is June 12, and today, the company announced that immediately following the transition this Friday, it will go live in 15 new markets, including Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco, and will expand in existing markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. More on MocoNews, here.

Lithium Technologies, an Emeryville, CA-based provider of white-label social networking tools focused mainly on the enterprise market, has done a small acquisition: it has bought Keibi Technologies, which develops automated content discovery, analysis, and moderation software for social media sites and services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Keibi’s technology is being used on AOL-owned Bebo, among others; it was founded in 2006, and raised $5 million in one round of funding from Hunt Ventures and Catamount Ventures in 2007. Lithium has raised a total of about $21 million in two rounds of funding, but has been around for a long time, since 1999. The technology was originally created as part of online gaming portal Gamers.com. CEO Lyle Fong and his brother Dennis co-founded Gamers.com and its parent, GX Media. Its solution is being used by Best Buy, Sony (NYSE: SNE), AT&T (NYSE: T), RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), Univision, and PayPal, among others. More details in release.

Imeem has had a good run the last several weeks, landing some new funding and winning better licensing terms from record labels. But how much will this change the music-streaming site’s near-term prospects? Probably not as much as you may think. Even with lower payments per stream, imeem may well not turn profitable by the time the latest funding dries up, which, according to some reports, will be before the end of the year. Many digital-media companies have resigned themselves to the idea that the ad market won’t start growing meaningfully again until 2010—and in the meantime, imeem will still have to make the payments to the labels. A look at imeem’s site indicates that the current ad mix likely isn’t enough to support even more favorable licensing terms. Here’s why: (Plus, see imeem’s response below.) —A lot of video ad inventory on the site is unsold: Video advertising commands the highest rates from advertisers, and thus is important to a site with high licensing and streaming costs like imeem. However, a sampling of imeem’s streams indicate well less than half of its videos are accompanied by advertising. Sprint (NYSE: S) appears to be the biggest video advertiser on the site. —Banner ads are likely getting low CPMs: T-Mobile is a large buyer of banner ads currently on the site, and Adidas appears to have made a small buy, but most of the banner ads on the site are from advertisers like Lincoln College, Stop & Shop, Vonage and Colgate, which typically do not pay premium ad rates for banners, usually placing buys in the low-single-digit CPM range. —Dearth of custom sponsorships: The real money maker for music sites are custom sponsorships that advertisers pay premium rates for, but Imeem currently doesn’t appear to have many on its site (few sites do these days, but not everyone is at risk of running out of money by the end of the year).  AT&T (NYSE: T) sponsors a section of the site that lists tour dates, but sections like exclusive album releases and “New Music Tuesdays”—prime products for sponsorship deals—don’t have any advertising at all. A Marilyn Manson exclusive stream does have sponsorship from Vitamin Water. —Selling music may not be the answer: The company recently said it would develop its own store to sell MP3s. With the average profit per song being about $0.20, that would be a nice incremental revenue stream, but not the boost the company needs to become profitable soon enough. Here is the response from Matt Graves, VP of marketing for imeem: “Even during the current economic climate, imeem’s ad business has continued to grow. Today, we have over 30 campaigns live on the site, many over the six-figure range and all with custom elements. In the past month alone, imeem has run campaigns with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Kia Motors, Wrigley’s, VitaminWater, Armani Exchange, LG (SEO: 066570), AT&T, Adidas and FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance, among others. And in 2008, we ran campaigns with over 100 brands. It’s impossible to understand the scope of the work we’re doing with advertisers based on looking at a single day’s worth of ads (whether we’re talking about imeem or, cough, paidContent), particularly when that snapshot is for the U.S. only.” Disclosure: I founded a digital-music company called Baeble Media, and imeem is one of many affiliate partners to which it distributes content.

Lithium Technologies, an Emeryville, CA-based provider of white-label social networking tools focused mainly on the enterprise market, has done a small acquisition: it has bought Keibi Technologies, which develops automated content discovery, analysis, and moderation software for social media sites and services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Keibi’s technology is being used on AOL-owned Bebo, among others; it was founded in 2006, and raised $5 million in one round of funding from Hunt Ventures and Catamount Ventures in 2007. Lithium has raised a total of about $21 million in two rounds of funding, but has been around for a long time, since 1999. The technology was originally created as part of online gaming portal Gamers.com. CEO Lyle Fong and his brother Dennis co-founded Gamers.com and its parent, GX Media. Its solution is being used by Best Buy, Sony (NYSE: SNE), AT&T (NYSE: T), RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), Univision, and PayPal, among others. More details in release.

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Barclays analyst Vijay Jayant says in a note for clients that the iPhone probably won't be on Verizon this year: Via John Paczkowski : "Launch of Apple's iPad on AT&T's network is a vote of confidence in AT&T's network by the equipment maker," Jayant...

Barclays analyst Vijay Jayant says in a note for clients that the iPhone probably won't be on Verizon this year: Via John Paczkowski : "Launch of Apple's iPad on AT&T's network is a vote of confidence in AT&T's network by the equipment maker," Jayant...

Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett has boosted his rating on Verizon (NYSE: VZ) to "underperform" from "neutral" and boosted his price target on the stock to $27 from $25.

Moffett said both Verizon and rival AT&T (NYSE: T) have underperformed the market over the last year and Verizon now trades at a 13% discount to the broader market.

If Verizon were to get its hands on the iPhone, “subscriber growth would swing decisively from AT&T to Verizon," Moffett said.

See the rest of the story here.

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T-Mobile may just manage to have one of the fastest mobile broadband networks for a short time, as it rolls out HSPA+ upgrades across its network this year. For the scoop on the network and which areas will get 21 Mbps down first keep reading.

Video is driving the projected increase in both mobile and wired broadband, but it's not only the proliferation of video that's the problem for mobile operators, it's the relative ease that consumers now have accessing it. And that's causing mobile operators to rethink their pricing plans.

As Research Recap noted at the time, perhaps the biggest surprise from Apple’s (AAPL) latest media extravaganza was that despite widespread anticipation there was no sign of an end to AT&T’s exclusive contract for the iPhone, or indeed of any move away from AT&T as Apple’s wireless provider. Noted Apple analyst Ashok Kumar of Northeast Securities [...]

Key Points: • With 308, or 61.6% of reports in, earnings season is going very strong. Median surprise 6.09%. Positive surprises beat disappointments by 2.25 ratio • Earnings of reported firms up 54.25% year over year, remaining firms expected to show 17,739.5% increase, or 356.8% excluding AIG (AIG) • Big reported earnings growth driven by Financials moving from loss a year [...]

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German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DT) is mulling over spinning off its U.S. arm, T-Mobile USA. Alternatively, the German operator may launch an initial public offering (IPO) for the US wireless unit, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Deutsche Telekom has negotiated with banks including Deutsche Bank (DB) to manage the IPO. A decision [...]

(DT) Is Deutsche Telekom Unit T-Mobile USA for Sale

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